Due to technological advances, touch panels are in wide use with various display devices to substitute for input components, such as keyboards and mouses, connected to the display devices, so as to enhance ease of use.
Conventional touch panels, for example, fall into categories as follows: resistive touch panels, photosensitive touch panels, and capacitive touch panels. When a user touches, with a finger or an object, a display device equipped with a touch panel, the display device can, for example, sense an electrostatic capacitance change produced as a result of associating a conductive induction pattern with another conductive induction pattern or a ground electrode and thus convert the contact position at which the user's finger or object and the touch panel come into contact with each other into an electrical signal, starting a related function of the display device.
However, a conventional touch panel supplier is able to supply touch panels with specific sizes and specific aspect ratios only. For instance, typical sizes of display units which come with conventional desktop computers are: 21 inches, 24 inches, 27 inches, and 32 inches. Similarly, typical sizes of the screens of smartphones are: 4.7 inches, 5 inches, and 5.5 inches. The display units and screens usually have aspect ratios of 4:3 and 16:9. As a result, the aforesaid specific sizes and specific aspect ratios of conventional touch panels supplied by suppliers constitute a limit placed on specific uses of the touch panels, for example, functioning as traffic sign displays, interactive advertising boards, and elevator control panels.
Although it is a possible option, customization of conventional touch panels has its disadvantages: die development takes months and is pricey; and customized touch panels have so few customers that they must be sold expensively in order to be profitable.